


Without A Heart

by parachutewoman



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-episode: Adam, Pre-episode: Reset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24807037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parachutewoman/pseuds/parachutewoman
Summary: Torchwood is investigating some strange occurrences in North Wales while Gwen is dealing with Rhys' efforts to get more involved and Ianto is struggling to work out his place in Jack's life.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59





	1. Gwen Cooper

The marmite must have been there for years. Gwen stretched into the back of the cupboard and rescued the jar which was huddled next to the old tins of baked beans and shattered spears of spaghetti. Eyeing the label, Gwen tried to rub away the sticky remains of glue that once held it to the glass. The expiration date was now long faded, leaving behind a smudged interpretation of its print.

Does marmite go off?

“I was thinking,” Rhys said, budging past his fiancée to grab the Nescafé. “Why don’t I come with you to Torchwood today?”

Gwen maintained a neutral expression, hoping to let the comment drift into oblivion as she tentatively lowered her butter knife into the tar-like substance.

What was marmite even made of?

She slathered a healthy spread across her slice of toast and slotted the dirty utensil into the dish washer. Gwen took a bite and watched as Rhys fumbled with his towel – once white, now worryingly beige – which was tied around his waist and comically slipping with every step. 

“Just saying,” he continued cheerfully, spooning two scoops of coffee into the oversized Sports Direct mug. “It’d be good to see you at work again.”

“You can’t be serious,” Gwen scoffed, crumbs of wholemeal bread bunching up around the corner of her mouth. “After what happened last time?”

“Not like that,” Rhys countered. “I could shadow you around the office. See what you do on more a day-to-day basis.”

Marmite didn’t go stale and Rhys never stopped trying.

Gwen was lucky to have a guy like him, as her mother – and _his_ mother – constantly reminded her. The idea wasn’t utterly farcical. She’d once brought him along to the force, having built up a reputation with the boys, and showed him around the station. With an eagerness Gwen now found embarrassing, she’d pointed out the evidence room, kitted him out in riot gear and introduced him to her superior.

Rhys had been _so_ proud of her.

It never escaped Gwen that he didn’t have to be. He earned more money than her for one, but he never saw that as any indication that she was anything but the breadwinner of the house. A police officer! He was nowhere _near_ as important. He was content to be the man on her arm.

Why was this different then? What was it about Torchwood? In Gwen’s mind, her future-husband should be relieved that he was divorced from all forms of paranormal activity. It’s what she was protecting him – and everyone else – from.

“Come on!” he sang, filling the cup to the brim with boiling water.

“There isn’t anything to see,” she protested. “It’s mostly desk research.”

Her boyfriend’s soft face suddenly turned sharp. “What’s wrong with me being there then?”

Nope. Gwen wasn’t having this. The clock hadn’t even struck seven and Rhys was already getting aggressive with her. She hadn’t even had her morning pee yet to rinse out their previous night’s argument. Rhys was fortunate she loved him with everything she’d got because she was too tired – and a little too hungover - to be compliant to his demands for the sake of it.

“Nothing,” she replied coolly. “I just don’t want you near that stuff. You have no idea how dangerous it can be, and I can’t do my job if you’re in my way.”

“Is that what you think I am?” Rhys shot back. “ _In the way.”_

Gwen rested her plate by the side of the sink. “Look, I just want you safe.”

Rhys opened his mouth to respond, but she threw her hands up and caught his jaw in her palms. The early morning stubble prickled against them as she waited for his expression to soften.

“It means the _world_ to me that I can come home to you at the end of the day,” she said. “Away from all the _bloody_ aliens.”

Rhys blinked. Gwen remained silent as she watched his eyeballs tick like a metronome. He was evidently wrestling with his response, or lack thereof, knowing anything that came out of his mouth would sound wrong. Backward. Chauvinistic. Gwen knew that he wanted to be a modern husband - he just didn’t want to work to get there. It was easy to parade himself around as The Boyfriend when he felt he was still in control of the situation. It wasn’t always going to be like that, and he needed to learn that she was not in the mood to nurse his fragile masculinity.

She wasn’t giving in. Only in her mid-twenties, Gwen had butted her head against too many glass ceilings to worry about concussion anymore.

A smile tickling up from her chest, she pressed her mouth against his, relishing the chocolatey bitterness of his lips.

Rhys’ hands suddenly grabbed her shoulders. Shoving her back, he opened his mouth wide, heaving out dry gasps of air. Gwen tried to reach out to him, but he pushed her back. His face twisted, he forced himself to cough whilst grating his tongue across his front teeth. Gwen watched in horror as he outstretched his hands to grab the side of the sink for balance.

A few moments of silence brewed, only punctuated by his heavy breathing.

“Marmite,” he finally stated, looking back at Gwen, traumatised but also apologetic. “Disgusting.”

Having established that her husband was not going to die, Gwen took to their shared bedroom to get dressed for the day ahead. She tackled an old pair of black jeans she’d kept in the back of the wardrobe, knowing that her backside would welcome the challenge, and paired them with a thin leopard print belt Rhys had bought from Jaeger. She settled for a plain white t-shirt, whose origin escaped her, as did most of her basic tees, and a tan leather jacket which was a bit worse for wear. She swiped away the bits of Weevil mucus from her ankle boots and bustled her way out of the flat, hollering to her betrothed that she would grab some wine from Marks on the way home.

As she entered the hub, the mechanical cog door revolving behind her, her ears caught the rushed pattering of feet above. It was the first sign that the day was going to be a late one, with Ianto already scaling the edges of their headquarters for bits of lost admin, obscure archive intel and forgotten espresso cups.

She peered up at Jack’s office to find him brooding over a folder she easily recognised as a police report. Ianto always printed out the longer texts for him, dutifully accommodating his boss’s preference for the tactile over the digital. A partiality she imagined Jack maintained throughout all aspects of their relationship.

Tosh and Owen were sat beside their workstations but, peculiarly for a Tuesday, the medic had ferried his chair over to his colleague’s desk. As Gwen scaled the few steps up to the second deck, she peeked Owen whisper into Tosh’s ear. Gwen could tell Owen had chosen the position for solely function, knowing his message could be kept private from proximity alone.

Tosh, on the other hand, was more than aware of the sensual ramifications of their closeness. Gwen noted how the arch of her back was curved. Neck stiff. As Owen’s low murmur rippled in her ears, she saw her co-worker’s bottom lip tremble. Gwen could tell just the heat of his breath felt like bliss against her neck. 

Owen had no idea. Probably wouldn’t care even if he did.

“What are you two gossiping about?” Gwen asked, fishing her house keys from her pocket, and throwing them onto the desk.

“Those two,” Tosh mouthed, pointing her index finger to her right.

Gwen glanced back over to Jack’s office and observed Ianto placing an arrangement of files on the desk. He ruffled his combed, charcoal hair and scowled keenly at the assembly of evidence. A bit too curiously, Gwen watched as his mouth began to move, clearly detailing the facts to Jack as he knew them.

So performative, she found herself thinking, as Ianto squared his hands on his hips and pretended to ignore Jack’s wandering eyes.

“We’re speculating,” Tosh resumed, drawing Gwen’s attention back to her. “Do you think they’re a proper couple now?”

“No,” Owen sneered, knowing that, as a man, he could appear far more insightful into their relationship than he had any right to be. “The boy’s just a hanger-on.”

Gwen dropped to her seat. How was she supposed to know? It was Tosh and Owen’s turn to try and work out the status of the relationship between their most senior and junior members of the team. She’d personally done her best to prize it out of them. Gwen had thought her ‘manners in bed’ comment was a stroke of genius at the time but, admittedly, it hadn’t really given them anything to go on. She’d chucked in the remark about the former Torchwood boss being alright looking when they were investigating Tommy together, but Ianto had only batted it back in the least helpful way possible.

Gwen wondered if Ianto had any idea either. It wasn’t as if Jack was very forthcoming about anything – she couldn’t imagine he would be any different in a romantic situation. In fact, he seemed to get off on keeping Ianto at a distance.

The three of them knew about The Date. Neither of them had worked out where they’d gone though. There was a bet going on if their Weevil hunts were genuine or if they’d just given up on making excuses. Between the hushed rumours and flippant jokes, Gwen did genuinely worry that Ianto was a bit lost navigating his relationship with Jack. She feared he was finding the temptation to be consumed by Jack’s larger than life persona too great to resist. A behavioural pattern he should have grown out of by now.

“We need at least one of us to be happy,” Owen huffed, rolling his chair back to his workstation.

“I have a wedding coming up!”

The medic screwed up his face. “I cannot express how much you and Rhys don’t do it for me.”

Gwen’s head whipped back to Tosh in hopes she would salvage her wounded ego, but only discovered her staring out into the distance, absentmindedly nodding her head.

Well. She was _so_ pleased she’d spent her hard-earned cash on a table for these four at the reception. No, Rhys, they would _want_ to be there. She couldn’t _possibly_ not invite them. To think, he’d conceded to her request on the proviso that he could speak his vows in Welsh. Now her wedding was going to be witnessed by at least two people who didn’t give a shit, and, in return, she would have no clue what Rhys was prattling on about half the ceremony.

The glass door slammed open and their boss sauntered across the walkway with a determined, hurried step. Ianto followed with the files clutched in his arms.

“Meeting room, people!” Jack called out. “We have a situation.”

Didn’t they always?

Gwen entered the meeting room and placed herself in her usual spot at the head of the table. Owen slid into his seat nearest the screen, already sceptically peering at the digitalised map of Wales. He had slipped on a ribbed black hoodie, knowing too well that Ianto would have only just switched the air conditioner on and it would be on full blast. Tosh had entered the room last and found a spot next to the doctor, tucking her hands into her V-neck jumper as she nestled in beside him.

Jack sat at the other side of the boardroom. His get up was as to be expected, a neatly ironed navy shirt tucked into black slacks held by brown suspenders. Looking at him, he had clearly been up all night. Nothing fun, mind you. Probably pacing. Storming back from one side of the hub to the other like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up hill in the depths of Hades, the weight of his immortal torment heavy on his shoulders.

It always made him so _grumpy_.

Ianto had taken control of the remote and started embedding the police reports onto the screen for all the team to see. An exercise that typically took the rest of them twenty minutes to set up. Unusually for their London export, Ianto was dressed relatively casually in a new maroon shirt and pin-stripe black trousers. The lack of waistcoat – and God forbid a tie – made him look naked. Gwen quite liked it.

“Dozens of incidents within the span of two weeks,” Jack started. “Violent breakouts all across North Wales. The police force have written it up as resentment over strangers coming to town.”

“Nothing strange about that,” Gwen added, feeling the crease in her middle of her brow deepen.

“Not exactly multicultural in Gwynedd,” Ianto muttered.

“Reports have connected it to some abnormal sightings,” Jack continued, eyes fixed on Gwen. “Anthropoid by the sounds of it, but definitely not human. Some kids found what they thought was a giant bird’s nest in Bangor. I’m guessing it was an alien breeding ground.”

“The rift doesn’t cover that far,” Tosh said, to herself more than anybody else.

Jack acknowledged her with a knowing grin. “Who says they came from the rift?”

“Anything linking them?” Owen asked, knowing his boss was getting to it but fully aware that Jack liked the meetings to have a natural flow of questions and answers. “You said there were multiple cases.”

“Nothing concrete,” he replied. “Only that they didn’t stretch far in land.”

“Maybe something to do with the coast then? Access to water?” Tosh pondered aloud, snatching a pen from her shirt pocket, and jotting her thoughts down on a pad of paper that Ianto had instinctively passed her.

“All good starting points,” he replied. “Ianto thinks we might have a lead.”

With the sound of his name, the archivist jumped into action, tapping on the remote and opening a CCTV recording tab. It was grainy black and white footage – as to be expected from any council owned camera – shot from a fixed angle. Boarded up shop fronts, kebab joints and cash converters stretched out down the empty high street. The team watched as the edges of the street fluttered with motion. Then, a mess of people edged into frame. Their back was turned but Gwen could recognise that their limbs were out of proportion and their skin was emanating an almost translucent white.

Suddenly, another group appeared to follow them. This time they were evidently human and, if Gwen was permitted to guess, clearly a bunch of blokes on their way home from the pub. With only a frame being captured every three seconds, it was difficult to tell what was happening but as the two groups converged, there was clearly an altercation and one of the human men found himself on the ground.

Gwen immediately recognised the way he was crumpled on the pavement, clutching his hand over his face, catching the tears of blood rushing from his nose. The unidentified creatures scampered away, their outstretched extremities appearing to soar through the air as if their bodies were swimming with the wind.

As soon as they were completely out of sight, the CCTV footage rewound to the beginning. After one more viewing, Ianto clicked the pause button and turned expectantly back to his boss.

“We need to gather more intel on who just turned up in our neck of the woods and see what’s causing all the commotion,” he told them.

“Then we’ll send them on their way,” Gwen added, lifting herself from her chair, ready to get cracking with their morning tasks.

“Excuse me?”

Gwen dropped back onto her seat, railing from the harshness of Jack’s tone. She turned to confront him and found his face was stern and cold like a statue. His eyes seem to darken over her, judging her comment, silently preparing himself for an argument. One of his own making.

“I just meant these aliens are obviously making a bit of a hoo-hah,” she said. “Seems like they need us to help them find their way back home.”

“Who said they were the cause of the violence?”

“I’m not picking sides,” she replied. “But Earth is for humans and aliens are, well, wherever they’re from. If they cannot live peacefully then the reasonable thing to do is to send them home. I don’t see us pitching up tent in anyone else’s atmosphere.”

“Not _yet_ ,” Jack counted.

“I don’t doubt it,” she retorted. “But _now_ is not _yet_.”

“So, because they are not native to this planet, you believe they have no right to be here?”

Gwen snorted, which evidently pissed off Jack more than she intended. It really was impossible to work out where Jack’s loyalties lied sometimes. One second, he was condemning Torchwood One for its inhumane practices. Another, he was transporting aliens to the centre of the sun. Where were all these pacifist aliens he kept talking about? So far, they had all presented themselves as hostile. She thought she was being relatively diplomatic recommending they be sent home.

“That’s not what I said,” she told him. “Torchwood is meant to protect humanity from supernatural threats. What do you want us to do about them?”

“The copper has a point,” Owen offered, quite clearly stirring the pot. “We’re not really equipped to facilitate widespread emancipation for extra-terrestrials in rural Welsh towns.”

“The 21st Century is where everything changes,” Jack told them. “This is going to be a regular occurrence from now on. You better get with the times.”

“Bit rich, coming from you,” Gwen snapped.

“Sorry?”

Gwen hated when he pretended not to hear. Goading her into repeating herself as if she wouldn’t dare condone her own words. While she’d definitely not prepared to make that particular statement, she certainly wasn’t ashamed. She was tired of Jack’s posturing over humanity without ever having to deal with it. It was new to them and it did not seem to be a ridiculous request for them to have autonomy over alien populations who crashed landed on Earth. Human beings deserved to be safe on their own planet.

“If the future is so grand then why are you here?” she asked.

All around her, she realised her teammates were not content on backing her up. She glanced first at Owen, who was playing idly with a ballpoint pen, a smirk scratching at the corner of his lips. By the door, she clocked Ianto and sensed the uncertainty rise in his chest. Tosh was staring straight forward, refusing to look either of them in the eye.

“I’m here because I want to be,” Jack said, slowly. “Because you need me.”

The silence washed over the room like the rush of cool breeze gusting out from the the air conditioner. Luckily, for all concerned, it was Tosh who broke the silence, placing her pen onto the table at the head of her pad of paper and rising to her feet.

“I think we should reserve judgement until we know more what we’re talking about,” she advised. “I suggest we actually investigate what’s been going on in North Wales.”

So, they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos/comments are very appreciated.
> 
> I will forever struggle with the inconsistencies of this show.


	2. Ianto Jones

One by one, the team paraded out of the meeting room and headed back to their workstations. Ianto held back, leaving the door open as they marched past him with cold, determined faces. As he pushed the glass to a close, he instinctively held out his foot, cushioning the door before the noise disrupted his boss’s thoughts.

Alone, Ianto shuffled from side to side, contemplatively slipping his hands into his trouser pockets, waiting for the right moment to speak up.

He was compelled to apologise on Gwen’s behalf. Her words had been needlessly cruel – especially for a Tuesday – but he knew she hadn’t meant him harm and Jack didn’t need to muse on the meaning behind them all morning. Ianto felt obligated to make things better. Smooth over the cracks. Stem the bleeding.

Even if it didn’t help.

This time, however, he consciously decided against it. For one, despite himself, he sympathised with Gwen’s outburst. Similar doubts had wormed their way into his head. Why _was_ Jack here? What did he know about the future? Who had given him the right to decide which alien invasions warranted mercy or death? Questions he’d only asked aloud when Jack slept silently beside him, breathing heavily, eyelids pulsing as the horrors of immortality played out in his dreams. Answers he knew he didn’t deserve to hear.

In the meeting room, Ianto tried to catch Jack’s eye with a muted smile but his boss refused to stir.

“That was intense,” he decided to say, noncommittedly.

Jack had his fist rolled up in his hand, an impatient anger simmering just beneath the surface as he tightly furled his hand in his grip. He continued to stare straight out ahead of him, through the panelled glass, down to the deck below where Gwen tapped at her keyboard with two index fingers.

“I’m sure Gwen didn’t mean what she said,” Ianto relented, stepping forward, as if Jack exuded some kind of gravitational pull that absently drew him closer, like a star being swallowed by a blackhole.

“I know.”

Jack didn’t sound convinced. He didn’t even try to mask it.

Quietly abandoning the idea of lightening his boss’s mood, Ianto instead contemplated whether Jack cared that he knew he was lying.

No, Jack had not even taken a moment to think about Ianto at all. Even as they breathed in the same air, Jack had made no attempt to consider the other man in the room, not when his mind lay with the woman downstairs.

Ianto looked at the floor sheepishly.

This was not a _new_ thought. Even after everything Jack and Ianto had been through - and they had been through _a lot_ \- he knew he didn’t occupy Jack’s mind the way Gwen did.

“We do need you,” Ianto reassured him.

Jack frowned; his attention temporarily wavered.

“I know you don’t always want to talk about your _past_ ,” Ianto continued, cautiously. “But maybe we need to know –”

“Not now, Ianto,” Jack ordered, pushing himself to a standing position. His back straight and shoulders tense, he turned to Ianto as if to salute, only to let the moment falter before storming out of the room and back into his office.

“Understood, sir.”

Ianto took his time shutting down the main computers and switching off the air con. Gritting his teeth, holding back the urge to scrape his fingernails across his eyeballs, he quietly collected the police reports and left for the downstairs area.

Planting the folder by his desk, he circled back to the coffee machine, not forgetting to fetch the pile of empty mugs growing high on Owen’s desk. The doctor, immersed in his work, didn’t even think to look up as Ianto coddled the five empty cups in his arms and brought them back to the refreshment station.

Ianto let out a weighty sigh, safe in the knowledge no one could see his flustered cheeks behind the mass of machinery that constituted his prized coffee maker.

He reached for an unopened packet of a dark, Peruvian blend and got to work. The placing of the filter, the resistance of the tamper, the rushing steam of full fat milk; usually, the ritual of making coffee would provide him with ample time to distract himself. Momentary oblivion, drowning in the bitter aroma of roasted beans, rather than dealing with his insecurities.

It wasn’t proving as successful today.

Ianto played his last few moments with Jack in his head, hoping to uncover where he had overstepped the mark – where he had slipped up - but he knew Jack just hadn’t wanted to talk. That was it. Jack was allowed his privacy. Ianto should learn to respect that.

Nevertheless, he found himself aimlessly stirring the spoon around the espresso, staring deep into the all-consuming black of the coffee, wondering what he had done wrong.

After the escapade with John Hart, Ianto and Jack had become increasingly close, often explicitly so. He had wined and dined him, brought him along on missions, even confided in him his fears about the future. Yet, whenever Ianto had exercised his right to intimacy – _real_ intimacy – Jack had rejected him. Played it off as another one of their in-jokes. Turned it on its head. Dismissed it.

What if Jack was losing interest? Owen had been first to warn him that the novelty of shagging the coffee boy would soon grow tired.

Ianto dipped his hand into the sink, turning on the tap to let boiling hot water rush over his palms for just a second too long.

He didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have Jack.

A world without him felt inconceivable because he didn’t know exactly who he was meant to be within it without him. Ever since that night, when they managed to capture Myfanwy, he’d felt himself compulsively drawn to him, consumed by the dark matter that seemed to surround him. The empty space he now knew could only inhabit a man who had lived so long and seen so much.

If Jack didn’t care - didn’t think to know him - then Ianto wasn’t even sure if he was there to begin with. After all, it was in the shadow of Jack’s immortality that Ianto’s own life had been able to shine through.

Who was Ianto Jones without Captain Jack Harkness?

Tipping the mug to the side and pouring in the frothy milk, he watched as the coffee diluted into a pale, earthy brown before his eyes. He rested the cup on the side and let it cool for a second.

“Ianto!”

Scrambling the rest of the cups onto a tray, Ianto bolted back down to the lower deck, hoping he was too fast for his worries to catch up with him.

The clacking sound of mechanical keyboards filled the room as the three Torchwood members indiscriminately perused classified government reports, police files and archive material. Owen was hunched awkwardly over his desk, face only inches from the monitor so that his skin glowed a sickly blue. Gwen was huddled by the phone, haloed by the blinking lights above, nibbling mindlessly on a pen. Tosh was busy working at the standing desk, in a pair of respectful heels, which Ianto always believed was a bit of a flex.

“Finally,” Owen muttered as Ianto placed down his americano.

“Don’t be so rude,” Gwen barked, giving Ianto a purposeful - if not slightly patronising - nod as he sat down the latte by her collection of binders.

“Bit rich, coming from you,” Owen mimicked. “Isn’t it nice we can just talk like this now?”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I wasn’t being out of order.”

“Nah, I say let the aliens pack their bags!” he jeered. “Fly the foreigners back home!”

“That was _not_ what I was saying,” Gwen said. “Would you want to be stuck on a planet you didn’t belong to?”

Ianto silently wondered whether anyone ever felt they _belonged_ to Earth. He knew he didn’t.

“These are _normal_ people,” Gwen continued. “Human beings shouldn’t have to worry about alien lifeforms turning up on their doorstep. That’s our job: to keep them away from all that.”

“Can’t be like that forever though?” Tosh pondered aloud. “Alien migration might be inevitable.”

“I still don’t think it’s fair to let Wales be some kind of testing ground,” Gwen answered, clearly softening her tone in light of Tosh’s contribution.

Ianto had lived amongst the extraordinary, in one form or another, for most of his adult life. Not long out of school, he had walked the corridors of Torchwood One, built from outer-planetary steel, then spent months carving out sections of Lisa’s flesh to fix to a cybertronic conversion unit. Nowadays, his daily routine consisted of scooping out Weevil dung and cataloguing extra-terrestrial debris, breathing in millennia of space dust in the process.

He was a living trial himself.

“What have you found?” he probed Tosh as he placed the black coffee, with a splash of soy milk, on the coaster beside her mouse.

“I’ve narrowed it down,” she replied, twisting the screen on its axis so it showed a Torchwood species report.

Ianto felt his stomach turn as he recognised the notes as his own, typed late at night to pass the time before Jack called him down to his bunker, having told him hours ago that he just needed to touch base with U.N.I.T.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“See what you can find on the Menoptra,” she told him, casually. “Might be something.”

Ianto settled by his desk and spent the next hour investigating the Menoptra – which was not spelt like he would have imagined - mindlessly trawling through sightings of similar insectoid species, none of which matched the aliens on the CCTV footage. The team mediated on their own findings in silence, only looking up to the occasional shriek from the pterodactyl or sip of their coffee, waiting for a revelation to strike.

“Looks like it’s not the first time this species has turned up in Wales,” Gwen suddenly shouted from across the room. “Even Dyfed-Powys has filed at least a dozen reports over the past few years.”

“How can you tell it’s our guys?” Owen asked, peering up from his desk.

“The long limbs, the translucent skin,” Gwen said, dully. “Pretty distinct.”

“Assaults?” Ianto asked.

“Not quite,” she responded. “A couple are altercations with the locals, but most are loitering, anti-social behaviour, a few thefts.”

“So, they’re not necessarily violent?”

“It’s still criminal behaviour,” she snapped back, defensively. “But no, they don’t appear to be doing anything too awful. Kid stuff, really.”

Ianto could tell something was playing on Gwen’s mind, the way she idly let the spinning biro blot blue ink on the tips of her fingers, but she was too engrossed in the idea to say it out loud. One more reminder that she had not been at Torchwood as long as the rest of them. As if there needed to be another.

“What’s wrong?”

“They must’ve known them.”

The team fixed their eyes on the ex-police officer. 

“What are you saying?”

“The assailants - I mean, the aliens – the police didn’t just _find_ them. They were carrying out a procedural stop and search, which _means_ they must have matched a description of some kind. Looking at the CCTV, they wouldn’t match any human composite, would they?”

“Maybe they can shapeshift?” Owen offered.

Gwen scowled. “ _Or_ maybe they’ve been here longer than we think.”

Ianto returned to digging up as much on the Menoptra as he could, but it became clear very quickly that six-foot bees were not exactly what they were looking for. As he turned his attention to the police reports, he began to speculate whether Gwen could possibly be right and there was a community of aliens residing in North Wales without any of them knowing. Living among human beings. Going about their affairs. Having normal lives.

He wondered what that would be like.

“Aha!” came the voice of Tosh echoing throughout the hub. “I found them!"

“You know what they’re called?” Gwen hollered back.

“No,” Tosh replied, though not letting it dim her smile. “Not exactly, but a Torchwood employee entered an extra-terrestrial log back in- oh.”

“What?” Owen remarked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Back in 1899.”

“Who made contact?” came the solitary voice of their Captain, appearing from his office.

“Cefin Adams,” she answered as their boss scaled the staircase. “It seems like he was the only one. It says here that Holyroud and Guppy did not communicate with the species.”

“They didn’t order him to kill them?” Jack asked, walking up beside her, and resting his hand proudly on her shoulder. “Not like them to be so merciful.”

“It’s a habit of our leaders to pick and choose then?” Gwen mumbled under her breath, just loudly enough for Jack to make a show of pretending not to listen to her. 

“Looks like they had pretty stable contact with Torchwood,” Tosh continued. “There are multiple entries until his death in 1922.”

“Why did they meet with them?”

Tosh gave a pause.

“They were asking for help.”

“Help?”

“They were dying out,” Tosh resumed. “It says here they were asking Torchwood to stop The Not.”

Ianto blinked.

Owen gave a quizzical look. “The _Not_?”

The Not.

Ianto had heard that name before. It wasn’t a familiar term; he knew that much. Mouthing the words, he found them feeling prickly on his tongue, like he knew deep down they were something to fear, something to dread. He refused to speak though. He had nothing concrete to input.

However, as he glanced back up at the team, he clocked Gwen in the same state of unease, the same faint familiarity dancing in her eyes, the same pained acquaintance with something she knew she had no way of remembering.

“Never heard of them,” Jack said. “But it could be why they ended up here on Earth. It’s not uncommon for aliens to seek refuge.”

Gwen and Ianto stepped forward, closing a circle around Jack. All of them were already well aware of the steps that needed to be taken but, like planets orbiting the sun, the magnetism of Jack drew them close.

“Right,” Jack said, slapping his hands together. “Ianto – find out if Canary Wharf had any meeting with the aliens. If they had been in contact, they might have dealt with the supposed threat. Owen – I’d look into the reports from Adams a bit deeper if I were you. Maybe they give some idea about what we’re dealing with. Tosh – let me know what you can find on The Not. I’ll speak to U.N.I.T. and see if it rings any bells. Gwen –”

The two locked eyes.

“- best speak to the officers, ask if they’ve had any communication with the species recently. We need to work out why they have reappeared.”

Ianto could feel Gwen consider and reconsider her response, over and over, weighing up the gratification she would get from testing her boss with the anguish it would undoubtedly cause.

She nodded.

For the next few hours, Ianto commandeered a corner of the archives and worked his way through at least two decades of Torchwood One’s records. He tried to keep his mind on the task, wary not to dwell too heavily on his conversation with Jack, yet equally as cautious not to think about his former employment. All the people who had suffer that day, all the people he had lost. Yvonne. Soren. Lisa.

He sat hunched at a solitary makeshift table made from crates of Torchwood Two’s library, refusing to move until he had enough information to go back upstairs, hoping beyond hope not to think about anything else at all.

“Torchwood One had a whole file on them,” Ianto reported back. “London registered that Cardiff had discovered a number of communities around Wales but there were no sightings in England. It was classified as low priority. No one from London ever made contact.”

He wasn’t surprised by his findings.

“Did they leave a species profile?” Jack asked, not looking up from the file in his hands.

“Just general stuff – anthropoid, transparent skin, white pupils, six to eight feet high.”

Gwen scowled. “London couldn’t even be bothered to traipse down the M25 to learn anything more about them?”

Ianto smirked, knowing that the modern variant would not have done much better. Torchwood or England.

“It does have their species name - Linguaphage.”

“What bunch of boffins came up with that?” Gwen scoffed.

“It’s Latin,” Owen chimed in.

“Yes, we _know_ it’s Latin, Doctor Harper,” she shot back, rolling her eyes.

“It’s not very catchy,” Ianto murmured. “Too many vowels.”

“Coming from a man called Ianto, that’s really saying something,” Owen snarked.

“Habitat?” Jack asked loudly, already tired of the office banter.

“I got something,” Owen sighed, bringing up a map on screen. “Adams was tracking their population as part of his duties. Menial job if you ask me.”

The team scurried over and watched as scans of a map of Wales imprinted on top of each other, showing a slow decline of ink smear over the country, concentrating further north and in-land with every annual report.

“A trajectory like that,” Tosh said faintly. “They would have certainly died out by now.”

“Maybe The Not wiped them out?”

“Then why do we have a small influx in Gwynedd?” Gwen mused. “And why are they suddenly making themselves known?”

“Maybe their population is growing?” Tosh offered.

“Why did Adams say they were dying?”

“He said they were lacking the right resources to survive,” she said, skimming over the report as she spoke.

“So,” Jack pressed on determinedly. “What has been hunted since the start of the twentieth century to almost extinction and has only started growing again in the past decade?”

“Which is found only in Wales,” Owen added, if only to add to the ridiculous list of variables.

“Linguaphage,” Tosh repeated. “Does that help us?”

“Phage means eating,” Owen answered, a little too proud of himself for remembering his first year at university. “Aphagia is the inability to eat.”

“And lingua?”

“The tongue,” the medic replied. “They eat tongues?”

“I think the Welsh have always had a steady supply of tongues,” Jack countered.

If he had not been immersed in the map, Ianto may have noticed Jack’s eyes prey on him, yet he found himself engrossed in the richness of the ink spreading across the map, diluting into a pale, earthy brown with each passing year.

A nonsense – eating, tongues, Cefin, nots, famine, Dyfed-Powys - spiralled around his head as if they were words spoken in a language he was not yet fluent in.

“The Not,” he said aloud.

Gwen’s head shot around. “You know of it too? Shit, I thought I was the only one.”

“I don’t know where I’ve heard it,” Ianto attempted. “It feels like something I would have heard as a kid, like a story told by someone old-”

“Do you two natives want to tell us what you’re chatting about?” Owen said.

“I know what you mean,” Gwen butted in. “Maybe from my grandad?”

“That’s it!” Ianto replied. “My nana. It must be a story she would tell me about her childhood.”

“I didn’t really understand much of my grandad,” Gwen resigned. “He only really spoke Welsh”.

“Welsh!” Tosh exclaimed.

The hub hummed with silence as the team fixed their eyes on her.

Up above, Myfanwy squealed.

“She’s finally snapped,” Owen sniggered.

“No, the Welsh language,” she replied, a beam from ear to ear. “I knew I’d seen a map like that before, it mirrors exactly the decline of Welsh – you know, as a language – before it got taken over by English. You only really hear it spoken in the North, right?”

“So, what are you saying?” the doctor asked.

“Not _tongue_ eater _\- language_ eater,” she continued, face flooding with joy as it all came together. “They must require language for sustenance.”

Owen’s face froze. “I’m sorry _what_?”

“The collective force of a shared language must produce an energy source to them and with Welsh being in decline for all those years - as a first language at least – that must have led to a famine?”

“Makes sense why no one could speak to them but Cefin Adams,” Gwen said.

“Excuse me!” Owen cried out. “Am I the only one hung up on the whole ‘they eat the Welsh language’ thing?”

“Language is _like_ a living organism,” Tosh said. “Just like how matter evolved into biological forms from the primordial flow of sub-atomic particles, maybe language forms from the same source. Perhaps, to this species, communication is part of their ecosystem like meat and plants.”

“ _Just_ me, then!?”

“Welsh has been on the rise,” Gwen said. “Rhys’ family _love_ to tell me.”

“I would have to do a lot of research but it’s something to go on,” Tosh replied.

“The Not isn’t a species,” Ianto added, finally recalling the sound of his nana’s lulling voice in his head. “I remember my grandma telling me. The knot was a cane. They made kids pass it between them at school if they spoke Welsh. At the end of the day, the last one holding it was beaten.”

“Why would they do that?” Tosh asked, horrified.

“To stop them speaking Welsh,” he sighed.

“So, we have an idea of what we’re dealing with. I say it’s time we paid them a visit,” Jack said. “Gwen, Ianto. Aim to travel tomorrow morning.”

“Tiny problem,” Gwen mumbled, lips pursed.

“Yes?”

“I don’t speak Welsh.”

Jack’s brow nestled.

“What?” Gwen said, folding her arms tightly over her chest. “I’m from _Swansea_.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Jack drew out. “So Ianto.”

“Me neither,” he muttered, knowing perfectly well his value to the mission had decreased ten-fold by that fact alone.

“ _You_ don’t speak Welsh?” Owen sneered.

“Whose fault is _that_?” Ianto growled, failing to subside centuries of nationalist angst rising up inside of him. Cursing himself, he turned quickly away from the medic, knowing his eruption would not go unchecked. 

“Do either of you know someone who does?” their boss invited them, looking sternly in Gwen’s direction with as much subtlety as one would expect from Captain Jack Harkness.

“Jack, _no_ ,” Gwen begged. “I don’t want him involved.”

“Unless you have any other ideas?” Jack challenged her. “But from where I’m standing, Rhys is the only one who is going to be able to help.”

“Fine,” Gwen conceded.

“Ianto,” Jack said, eyes rested on him with a steady resolve. “I want you to go too.”

Flooded with desire to maintain Jack’s attention, equalled only by the dread of him turning away, Ianto confirmed his boss’s wishes with a nod of his head. He wasn’t sure what he was expected to do – if he could offer anything at all – but he wanted nothing more than to do it. For Jack. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long hiatus (what a year) I have decided to return to this. I am not as sure about this chapter but I wanted it out there.
> 
> Comments/kudos are always appreciated!


	3. Rhys Williams

Was nothing sacred?

Torchwood had to ruin everything. Rhys was convinced of it.

The Welsh language. His mother tongue gobbled up by aliens like chip scraps. It made no sense whatsoever but here Torchwood was, like clockwork, spewing bullshit like it was simple as all that. It had taken three attempts for Rhys to believe Gwen completely, certain that she must be having him on. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to say silly things, play on his gullibility, giggle at his naive protests.

Well, it used to be.

Rhys slumped further into the wire chair outside of Café Nero, boring his eyes into his mocha. Mute, he reached out to grab at his tuna melt and pretended to look like he didn’t regret sitting outside in the cold.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” Gwen tried, zipping up her jacket against the brisk wind.

“You can say that again!” he cried. “What do you need me for?”

“You speak the language,” she answered him gingerly. “We think we’re going to need a translator.”

Typical. He should have guessed the only reason he would be invited back to Torchwood was because of something as stupid as that. Despite what Captain Jack Harkness might assume, being a transport manager of a shipping firm was an impressive feat – it required plenty of logistical skills, intimate knowledge of export and import operations, not to mention delegating to an overworked team of lorry drivers. He could be a valuable asset. But no, he was chosen for something as silly as his ability to speak a language most of the country should know anyway.

“I’m guessing you don’t either?” he questioned Gwen’s co-worker.

Ianto’s brow deepened, as if insulted. “Why does everyone think I would speak Welsh?”

Rhys didn’t answer. He was not about to be rude to the guy – they’d barely had a conversation before this - and he wasn’t going to admit aloud that Ianto just looked like the kind of tedious bore that would teach himself Welsh. Not that there was anything wrong with that, mind you. Rhys was delighted that someone would give it a go, even if lads like Ianto spent more time pontificating about grammar and syntax than they did actually speaking it with anyone.

At least there were people out there trying. Not everyone had the luxury that Rhys had. He was proud of his roots, honoured to have a family who spoke Welsh at home. He even had a Welsh O-Level which Gwen, for some reason, found immensely funny.

“Just thought you would’ve taken the time,” he said instead.

“It wouldn’t have been much help down in London though, would it?” Gwen said, looking at Ianto expectantly, hoping to give him an out.

Oh yeah? Ianto Jones had buggered out the country as soon as he could afford the Megabus, had he? Come back home with his tail between his legs when the rent got too high? Explained the poncy suit and the dour expression currently plastered all over his face. Probably thought it was beneath him to be involved in such _regional_ matters.

Rhys sank his teeth into the rest of the panini, trying to press his prejudices to the back of his mind. Ianto had done nothing wrong, poor guy. Rhys was projecting, and he knew it. He was just tired of meeting up with old schoolmates who had scurried off to the old smoke, like moths to the flame, only to return during the Christmas break and ask him jokingly why he had never left. Fed up with being treated like a pleb for not giving up the country that bred him, loved him, defined him. How could you not stay and make it a better place? All for a pint that cost a fiver. Thanks, but no thanks.

Rhys gritted his teeth. Only a couple of hours ago, he’d almost begged Gwen to let him tag along to work – just to confirm she was ok – and here was his wish granted. Not exactly what he had in mind, but he wasn’t surprised that Torchwood rarely gave you what you wanted.

He agreed – though he suspected he didn’t have much choice – and finished off his coffee with one large gulp.

Ianto laid out the plan as they made their way to the car. He wasn’t permitted in the Torchwood SUV for some reason, so they took his four-wheel drive. Ianto shuffled into the back with his leather satchel, pushing aside random bits of crap to the side, offering quietly to clean it out before they set off.

“No, no, don’t be silly,” Gwen said, shoving the _Kebabalicious_ containers onto the floor.

The plan was simple enough. Find the so-called Linguaphage – not _Linguaphages_ as Ianto kept reminding him – by checking out the final meeting place named in the files of Cefin Adams.

Gwen had tried to sneak in the fact that Torchwood had been around for over a century, but Rhys had been paying too much attention, and nearly crashed into a tractor as a result. He tried asking questions but the two of them batted them away by telling him to concentrate on the actual road.

Rhys couldn’t quite get his head around Torchwood having been around for that long, without anyone even knowing.

“ _Well_ ,” Gwen chuckled, a couple hours into the journey, hanging her hand on the car door handle. “There’s a good chance a lot of people knew.”

“We’re not exactly discreet,” Ianto conceded.

Rhys glanced at him through the car mirror, still engrossed in a report he’d snaked from his satchel. He had kept silent most of the way up, flitting between looking out the window, calling back to the hub to keep the team up to date on their whereabouts and re-reading the file which clearly had no more information to gather from it.

“You not getting car sick?” Rhys asked, cautiously giving his fiancée a glance. “Maybe you should put down the-”

“No.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, returning his mind to the imperative question of whether it was too early to stop at the services and get himself a meal deal. 

They finally arrived in Mallwyd in the late afternoon and checked themselves into a rundown bed & breakfast off the side of the main road, much to Gwen’s dismay. She kept asking Ianto if they could upgrade. Ianto point-blanked refused. Rhys wasn’t about to disagree either. Ianto was right – there was no point, an ‘upgrade’ at a hotel situated round the back of a petrol station would likely only account for a couple extra pillows.

“You’re lucky – we were packed last week,” the teenaged concierge told them from behind the counter. “Literally two families per room.”

“Oh yeah?” Rhys asked, semi-politely, as Ianto signed for their two ensuites.

“Shed load came up for the Eisteddfod.”

Rhys had been to a fair few Eisteddfods in his day. Even competed when he was a young’un. His mother had almost decked the local music teacher to get him into the church choir even though, to be fair, they rarely bothered to turn up on Sundays. They were alright way to spend a weekend - if a little trite - but he’d gleefully wasted his time running around the stalls, asking stupid questions about the people in funny robes and bellowed _ti’n ddel_ at girls in their colourful leotards. The last big one had been in Cardiff, but Gwen had been too busy with Torchwood to even sneak a visit.

Suddenly, Gwen pushed between them and placed the local newspaper on the counter, flicked past to the middle pages. Rhys wondered what the hell she would have wanted them to see; local newspapers were full of drivel – drunken farmers fighting over land, old people’s homes being built next to porno shops or an appeal to rename the new roundabout after a particularly brave cow.

Gwen placed an accusing finger on one of the stories. “The incident we saw on the CCTV footage. No calls for witnesses, not even a description. These people clearly know who they are and want to keep that concealed.”

As the two Torchwood employees grumbled about what to do, Rhys watched as the boy’s eyes shot to the paper. Gulping down a breath, he then attempted to find something interesting in the tourist pamphlets by the register. Indoor kart racing, five quid off a quarry tour and last winter’s pantomime starring Basil Brush.

Nice try, mate, but a dead giveaway he was hoping not to draw attention to himself.

The boy was short for his age but round like a cannonball with two deep-set eyes to match. He’d combed his mess of hair to one side, letting a couple of greasy strands dip over his left eye.

“What’s your name?” Rhys asked him in Welsh, attempting a warm smile.

“Dylan Gloocock,” he answered back. “You speak Welsh then?”

“Alright, Dylan, yes I do. You look knackered.”

“I am! I’ve been sleeping in one of the spare rooms since we got kicked off our house.”

“What happened?”

“Landlord sold it off to some English twats.”

“Nice couple?”

“Haven’t met them, have I? I doubt we’ll ever see them.”

“Least you had the Eisteddfod,” Rhys segued. “You didn’t have any unwelcome guests, did you?”

“Nah, all the usual fare.”

“That didn’t include aliens, did it?”

Dylan scowled. Rhys watched him weigh up his response – he could tell that Dylan wouldn’t have used those words, but he knew damn well what Rhys was talking about.

“What are you talking about?” the boy said highly unconvincingly.

Gwen stirred from beside him by the sound of Dylan’s tone, even if she couldn’t work out what he was saying.

“Big guys, see through, pale eyes, caused a bit of ruckus in town?”

“Nothing wrong with that. It was a long time coming - they got what they deserved.” 

“You took this into your own hands?” Rhys pressed, this time speaking in English so that Gwen and Ianto could stop eyeballing the back of his neck. “Are they Linguaphages-”

“Linguaphage!”

“The _what_?” Dylan continued, still in Welsh, sneering at Ianto. “No, they don’t have _names_. They just _are_ – you know?”

“Do you know where we could find them?”

“What for?” Dylan asked, finally breaking into English again.

“Dylan – we could send them back home,” Gwen assured him, her voice motherly soft yet firm. “Our job is to handle stuff like this.”

“I didn’t know they were lost.”

“They might not either,” she continued. “We think they’ve been here a long time. We’re here to deal with their recent re-emergence.”

Rhys observed Dylan switching his attention between the three of them, unsure of what to say next. He supposed the boy had seen a lot in this line of work. Randomers coming in at the dead of night, paying in cash for a solitary rate before disappearing the next morning, slipping the key card into the check-out box without saying a word. Late-night shift workers, adulterers, family road-trips, drug dealers, people smugglers, lost tourists. He’d probably seen his fair share of alien lifeforms without even knowing. Maybe he didn’t want to know. 

“There’s a meeting place at the top of the hill by the chip shop,” he told them, scratching the bum fluff on his chin. “Sometimes they meet there.”

“How will we know when we find them?”

“No clue,” Dylan said, his eyes set on Rhys. “I’ve never looked for them.”

“We should probably wait until morning,” Gwen told the two of them, grabbing the key cards from the desk and giving Dylan a stern and final goodnight. She handed one to Ianto and presented a hug, which he smiled at but declined, before retiring into his room two doors down from theirs.

“Is he alright?” Rhys asked Gwen, as they both circled the bed, untucking the sheets from under the mattress, desperately trying to avoid thinking about the dark patches burnt into the carpet.

“Jack and I had a go at each other this morning,” she confessed. “I think he probably got the brunt of it.”

“He and Jack are a thing then?” he asked, tugging off his polo shirt and placing it on the back of a nearby chair.

“I guess,” she replied, slipping into the covers in just her knickers and a t-shirt. “They’ve been in a bit of an odd patch. None of us know what is going on. Sometimes they’re all flirty, the next they’re deadly serious.”

“Sounds just like another couple I know,” Rhys chuckled, snuggling up to Gwen, snaking his cold feet between her legs. “If they’re anything like them – they stand a good chance.”

Any other woman would have kicked his footsies away, Rhys thought to himself, but not Gwen. Without even being asked, she gripped them even tighter, smothering them in warmth. He smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her closer, if only to mask the smell of mildew on the fitted sheet.

“What do you think about these aliens then?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she groaned, breathing out a genuine sigh. “I’m used to big scary monsters, mindless things we can lock up in cages. The only thing that’s ever come out of the rift not looking human that needed our help was that creature you saw-”

“The meat whale thing?”

Gwen snuffed a laugh. “Yeah, and I thought it would’ve been the right thing to do to send it home if we could. No way it wanted to be on this planet, suffering like that.”

“Jack doesn’t think these Linguaphage should be sent back?”

“Despite the fact they’ve attacked people.”

“The kid Dylan didn’t seem too happy about them either.”

“I’ve seen Jack execute aliens for a lot less,” she muttered. “He frustrates me so much!”

“You’re doing alright, I think.”

“How are we meant to live among them? These aliens are not like us. They eat language! What kind of bollocks is that? It’s not like it was with the police, I could hold people accountable for their actions. Where is my jurisdiction?”

Rhys pressed his mouth against her skin, the dark hairs trailing down her cheek tickling his lower lip, trying to calm her before she got so worked up, she couldn’t fall to sleep.

“And we’re the ones who caused this!” she exclaimed. “Grown our very own alien ant farm by changing all the stop signs and teaching kids their timetables in _sodding_ Welsh.”

Rhys frowned. “Our kids will speak it though, won’t they?”

“Yes, _of course_ , they’ll be taught it in school.”

“At home too?”

Rhys felt Gwen relax her thighs.

“Do you want me to learn it?” she asked, choosing her words carefully.

“I’d like you to, yeah,” he replied. “It seems only fair if they’re going to grow up bilingual.”

Gwen didn’t reply, just stared blankly at a ceiling which bore the scars of a world before the smoking ban.

Rhys switched off the bedside light, letting her know her she didn’t need to give him an answer. Not right now.

He’d never asked her before, but it seemed like a better time than any. Was it so much to ask? Would she have debated it if it had been any other language? It had been a big enough issue letting him say his vows in Welsh, but he thought he’d got her to understand that it was more than just words. It was how he understood how he loved her. He wanted her to hear it from his heart and he wouldn’t be able to do that in English, not truly. It would be the same with his children. He wanted them to know things like that were important.

In the morning, the three of them rose and ate Cornish pasties lifted from a vending machine and drove the extra mile to the chip shop called, charmingly, Fry Days. When he thought he was out of earshot, Ianto requested that Gwen never tell Owen about it. The poor guy, Rhys thought. He never felt like touching a man before – not that there was anything _wrong_ with it – but he wanted to reach out and grip his shoulders, loosening up all the kinks in his neck. 

“Why’d you head down to London?” he decided to ask him, unable to take the silence any longer as they scoped their way up the hill.

Ianto stilled, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow before answering, “personal reasons.”

“Were you one of those city boys, boozing it up at Canary Wharf?”

“You could say that.”

“I got a couple of mates who moved to work for Morgan Stanley. Gwen, you remember Lewis and Asad?” – his fiancée nodded her head, only half listening – “I’ve visited them a couple of times. Solid night out if you don’t check the bank balance the next day.”

“It has more than that,” Ianto replied, a little too deadpan for Rhys’ liking. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so tetchy on the subject – Gwen had offered up the information pretty freely. He didn’t feel like he was asking anything out of the ordinary.

“Oh yeah?” he asked sincerely.

“It’s the centre of everything – politics, finance, culture, technology.”

“I prefer to know my neighbours.”

“But that’s the point,” Ianto answered, not quite looking back in Rhys’ direction. “You’re a small cog in this big machine - you can be yourself.”

“What were you before?”

He didn’t get an answer.

Rhys couldn’t work his head around him. Even with only Gwen there, he seemed to separate from them like oil in water. The lad was young, probably only a few years his junior but Rhys was wise enough to know what that experience could bring. Ianto had no idea how shite your early twenties were in the grand schemes of things. Always waiting for life to make sense, constantly on the look out for a purpose, wanting someone to just come along and give you all the answers. He probably hadn’t worked out that he was going to feel like like this forever. It was a conscious, uphill struggle.

“You met some wonderful people though, didn’t you, Ianto?” Gwen said, slipping back into the conversation.

“I did.”

“When they weren’t making jokes about sheep-shagging, I bet?” Rhys snickered.

Ianto quickened his step.

“For God’s sake!” Gwen hissed, slapping him on the shoulder. “Learn when to keep your mouth shut.”

After an hour – and only one rest stop for Rhys to take a leak – the three of them found themselves at the zenith of the hill. Rhys had found the last few yards a little steeper than he’d liked, falling back for a few moments to catch his breath. When he’d caught them up, he found the two Torchwood members creeping around heaps of sticks and hay, each identical, placed perfectly in a circle.

“Jack said there was one like this in Bangor,” Ianto told them, slipping a device from his pocket, and logging their sighting.

“He said a breeding ground, right?” Gwen asked, peering around to see if anyone had followed them.

“I always wondered where they put the extra crop when they make the circles,” Rhys joked.

Neither of them laughed. Part of him wanted to double-check the whole crop circles thing because he’d lost a tenner to Banana Boat, but he thought now probably wasn’t the best time.

“We should tell Jack what we’ve found,” Ianto suggested, readying his earpiece.

“Why?” Gwen shot back.

Ianto held his finger hesitantly. “We need to keep him informed.”

“And tell him what? We found some straw - solid field work!” she jeered. “How about we work this out ourselves?”

“I just thought-”

“You don’t need Jack to tell you what to do.”

“I wasn’t saying-”

“You’re not his butler,” she snapped. “You don’t need his permission to do everything.”

“Maybe accountability isn’t something you should shrug off,” he murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“He’s our boss,” Ianto reminded her. “He should know.”

“Oh yeah, that’s the reason you’re desperate for his approval,” Gwen said, rolling her eyes.

“What does _that_ mean?”

Rhys tapped Gwen on the shoulder, doing his best to stand stock still, hurrying “guys” as urgently as he could without opening his mouth too wide.

“Could you give us a second?” she barked, turning with Ianto to glare her fiancé down. It would have worked, Rhys thought, if he had not been stood directly in front of what was undoubtedly a Linguaphage.

The figure was only a foot taller than Gwen but somehow, with its hunched shoulders and lumbering gait, appeared to be a child. Its extremities looked human but stretched out of proportion like an eager toddler had moulded it from play doh. As Ianto had described, their skin was pale, a bruised red blushing beneath thin, almost transparent, skin.

Its face was like a lump of white clay, unformed on top of its body, with two bulbous orbs dotted in the middle. It stared out from above a dank, white cloak that covered them up to where its nose would be which was mostly covered by the robe, but Rhys suspected there was one in there somewhere.

What he couldn’t see was a mouth. He gathered they had one. They ate language, didn’t they? Neither Ianto nor Gwen had told him _how_ though – apparently the boffin back at the hub hadn’t quite worked that one out - so he decided to reserve judgment on the mouth until he could see it.

“Hello, nice to meet you,” he tried, in Welsh.

Its spherical eyes flashed like a lightbulb being shot with a spark of electricity.

“Why are you here?” it asked beneath the cloak. Rhys found himself instantly recognising the voice but unable to place it, even physically. The accent was Welsh, unquestionably, but shapeless and unformed like its own mass of flesh.

Rhys opened his mouth to reply, knowing the other two would not have understood but before he could, Gwen answered back.

“We want to talk to you.” she tried. “You speak English?”

“No, Gwen,” Rhys replied. “You just heard it say something in Welsh.”

His wife-to-be shot him a sharp look.

“No,” Ianto said, refusing to take his eyes off the Linguaphage. “We heard it speak English.”

“What would you like to speak to us about?” it asked innocently.

Rhys looked back, realising that there could be no mouth from underneath that cloak.

“We’re Torchwood,” Gwen said. “We used to be in contact with your _people_. Cefin Adams? Have you heard of him? We need to speak to you about-”

“Torchwood could not help us last time,” it replied.

“I know,” she answered. “But you have been causing a lot of trou-”

“Hey!” Rhys called out, stepping forward to take Gwen’s hand, slowly pulling her away, giving her a moment to rethink her approach. “Did you lot enjoy the Eisteddfod?”

The eyes flashed.

“Bit corny,” it retorted.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess it can be! I used to get dragged to them as a kid. Lots of choirs when I can’t sing for shit.”

“You can understand English?” Ianto continued.

Rhys sighed, wondering if he was the only one who had worked out that the aggressive questioning had seemingly never got this Torchwood bunch anywhere.

“I understand you,” it replied.

“What is all this then?” Rhys asked, hoping to change tact again, waving his arms around to the sodden lumps of hay.

“It’s a memorial ground; it’s sacred to us,” it answered. “Apparently.”

“Probably don’t want to be hanging out in the middle of it then,” Rhys offered. “Can you help us out? You seem like a helpful lad. We just want to talk to someone in charge, someone who can explain what’s been going on.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Rhys focussed on the creature. The voice, wherever it originated, sounded frightfully aware of the conversation they were actually having, as if the hidden meaning behind his words were being written out letter by letter.

“What should we call you?”

“We haven’t got names,” it told them. “We don’t make our own words.”

The alien turned and moved back down the hill, letting the three of them carefully trail behind. His long limbs seemed to heave and thump across the damp morning grass. There was nothing graceful about the way it moved, each step seemed heavy yet tentative with its spiderlike legs arching back and forth like a foal walking for the first time.

Near the bottom of the other side of the hill, they followed the Linguaphage down a path until they found themselves at the mouth of an abandoned quarry. It was a few hundred feet deep, pedestrianised by thick layers of slate dug into the earth, giving way to spiralling man-made roads. Jagged pillars of rock shot up from the earth at regular intervals, unyielding and uninviting. Rhys considered how the Linguaphage no longer looked so alien as they continued to circumnavigate the quarry. It almost felt like he was a visiting astronaut touring a crater on a distant planet.

As the sun finally peaked through the clouds, Rhys looked above and noticed a thin wire splitting the sky in half. A zipwire. No doubt when the quarry flooded, it made an idyllic picture, especially scaling the heavens like a shooting star but, without the rain, the quarry was a graveyard of dry, derelict rock. Rhys thought a zipwire was an odd way to commiserate it. Looked fun though.

Finally reaching the floor, the three of them followed the Linguaphage as it turned towards the entrance to a cave. Slate was heaped beneath their feet in thicker and thicker stacks, fragments of forgotten rock carpeting their way to the cavern.

“Is this where you live?” Gwen asked.

“Not always, and not all of us.”

The three of them stepped warily behind the Linguaphage, edging closer together. Rhys clocked in his corner of his eye both of his comrades reaching for their hips. They better not, he thought. Surely, they wouldn’t do anything as stupid as make it plaintively obvious they were armed. He had not been brought all the way here – driven up the A470 on a _Tuesday_ – to watch the massacre of a race of aliens who were as threatening as _Morph_.

The cave inside was surprisingly shallow with a low ceiling, clearly having been etched into the quarry as a store house for mining equipment once upon a time. Cuts of slate lay everywhere. A glimmer of light from outside kept it warm, washing the rock with a pale orange glow.

As they piled inside, they noticed a congregation of Linguaphage clustered in the corner. They seemed at ease, huddled together for comfort rather than protection. Rhys wondered if they had families and if constituted one. 

“Where have you been?” one of the Linguaphage called out, pushing themselves to a stand and stepping forward. As they rose to full height, Rhys took in a deep breath. They were nearly eight foot, give or take, and their cloak seemed to billow around them like a curtain call. Its face was set differently than the child that escorted them, curved and smooth as if shaped by a potter’s hands.

“I found them on the hill,” the child replied. “It’s Torchwood.”

Rhys felt the swollen eyes of the tall Linguaphage rest on them, observe them, drink them in. It wasn’t a menacing look, almost like a massive goldfish staring wonderingly out of its glass bowl.

“Your help is not needed,” it told them, casually. “We are well fed.”

Gwen broke away from Rhys and Ianto, inching towards the Linguaphage. “We are here for another reason. It has come to our attention that you have been making yourselves known to the locals. We understand the police have made reports of your presence, especially as you have been causing fights.”

“We don’t know it’s _you_ who are causing the fights,” Ianto butted in.

Gwen eyed him before resuming, “and Torchwood has a responsibility to monitor alien life on Earth, to keep human beings safe from-”

“Cefin Adams gave us the schtick,” it replied. “He seemed as confident of it as you do.”

Gwen and Ianto seemed taken aback by the response. Rhys wondered what the Linguaphage could hear when they spoke. Without a mouth, the voice seemed to project into their heads simultaneously, like a shared thought.

“Let’s talk about that attack on the high street then,” Gwen said. “On camera, it looked like you struck one of the men.”

“I _told_ you there was CCTV,” their guide seemingly muttered, angrily kicking a piece of slate at a neighbouring Linguaphage of similar build.

Rhys couldn’t help but smile – it was just like a teenage boy being caught out by a condescending PCSO for vandalising the local post office or stealing traffic cones.

“So, you’re aware you are known to the police,” Gwen said, as if reading them their rights.

“We have never hidden away,” the tall one replied, waving its extended limbs.

“Apparently there’s been a lot of resentment,” Rhys thought to say. “I get it – people fear what they don’t understand but it’s no excuse. No one should be harassed.”

“They should if they do not fit in.”

Rhys frowned.

“You’re not the strangers then?”

“We must protect these communities,” it continued. “The imposters spoil the yield.”

“You did assault those men then?” Ianto asked them to confirm.

“They got what they deserved.”

Rhys remembered the lad saying the same thing back at the B&B. Dylan had been quick to agree that the people had got what had been coming to them. Rhys had just assumed they had got their own back on the Linguaphage, he hadn’t thought for a second that the attack on the lads had been seen as warranted. But who would have…

“Those men were _English,_ weren’t they?”

“We could hear it!” it growled. “We had to act. We’ve watched how this language has decayed, but we can hear it singing now. We must keep it alive. This harvest must be allowed to reap.”

“You can’t just go and attack people though!” Rhys cried. “Even the English.”

“We are protecting you from their _thinking_ ,” it replied. “It infects you. We can only feed when the language is untainted, we must let it breathe.”

“Surely there is not enough people speaking Welsh?” Ianto quizzed them.

“Language feeds us, not words,” it corrected him.

“Why Welsh though?” Ianto pressed. “Wouldn’t you be better off choosing a language that everyone was forced to learn? If you feed off a shared form of communication, then why not you attach yourself to the most common language on Earth?”

“Did you choose Welsh?” it asked.

“Why attack English _people_ if it’s not about-”

“They carry their language here like a sickness. You have no idea how loud they are! It contaminates everything.”

“They’re not a disease!” Ianto told them.

Rhys hadn’t envisioned this would be his first contact with an alien species. Even now, it seemed like a mix of a dream you had when you ate cheese too close to bedtime, and every drunken conversation he’d ever had with his uncle Gavin.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Rhys agreed, hoping to keep his voice a lot calmer than Ianto was managing. “There’s no future where Welsh people don’t speak English at all.”

“There could be, if we fight.”

“We’re not at war,” Rhys demanded. “It’s not about winning. Learning Welsh is not about forgetting English. It’s about _us_ , it’s not about _them_. I mean, they’re right bloody there! The most powerful language in the world on our sodding doorstep. We wouldn’t be able to get rid of them even if we tried.”

At that moment, Rhys became very aware that the Linguaphage were now circled around them. Ominous pale figures with bulging spherical eyes staring down at them.

“I think you have outstayed your welcome, Torchwood.”

“I could say the same for you,” Gwen explained. “If you continue with the violence, we will send you straight home.”

“If that is what you wish,” the Linguaphage answered. “Then we will be forced to take it with us.”

“Take _what_ with you?”

“We cannot let this magnificent language go to waste.”

Rhys was dumbstruck, completely baffled at what was transpiring in front of him. He had no idea what Gwen was going to say – no clue what he wanted her to say either. Is this what she had been protecting him from? He’d always thought she must be dealing with bobble heads with ray guns, demanding to _speak to their leader_ , or at least bursting out of someone’s chest.

Part of him was pissed that his language was being weaponised like this. Was it even his? Was it theirs? Had their entered the Earth’s atmosphere, sent from the depth of space, bringing with them this beautiful bounty? The language that had brought this land so much joy, the inspiration behind great pieces of literature, the words which would marry him to Gwen. Maybe not? What if they had they dropped down, latched onto it like a parasite, sucked it dry when it was at its most vulnerable until they had completely taken over. Now they kept it hostage.

He didn’t want to know.

“You can’t do that!” Rhys spat.

“We will do what needs to be done,” it spoke to Gwen.

“Is that it then?” she asked. “Is this the choice?”

“It is not a decision we have asked you to make.”

“Gwen, you can’t just let them-”

She put out a hand to grasp for Rhys, silencing him as she held onto his forearm, tightly squeezing it, letting him know she knew.

“Fine, we’ll go,” she told them. “But I don’t want to hear of you assaulting anyone.”

“It is not our intention for you to hear of us _ever again_ , Torchwood.”

Rhys wanted to punch the bugger and watch the ethereal Mr Blobby fall to the ground like a sack of spuds.

He didn’t, he just stood here, looking back and forth between Gwen and Ianto as they took the situation in. Without saying another word, they stepped back out of the cave and scaled back up to the top of the quarry, following their footsteps back to the hill and then to their parked car. Every so often, Rhys thought about speaking, asking them what they were meant to do next, but he never found the courage to break the silence. Ianto mindlessly stabbed at the device from his pocket, typing in random pieces of data, now and again letting his finger linger on his earpiece before giving up. Gwen strode ahead, letting out audible sighs as the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the early signs of rain spittled on her head.

Turning the final corner by the chippie, the sight of the Skoda greeted them with a newly painted wash of mud splattered across the side where Rhys had parked it too close to the grass. The three of them stared emptily at each as they reached the car, a hand weighted on the car door, each expecting the other two to say something.

“Did we just meet –” Ianto finally said.

“Please,” Gwen begged.

“-Welsh nationalist aliens.”

“Don’t,” she insisted, snapping the door open and climbing inside.

Ianto let himself smile – which Rhys thought suited him - and slipped into the front seat beside the driver, both of them silently agreeing that Gwen could do with a rest.

The ride home was quiet bar the low hum of BBC Wales who were regurgitating the rugby scores to a country of mildly interested commuters. He wanted to say something, make all the madness of the past day and half feel worthwhile. He had nothing. He wondered how often Gwen found any solace in her work if this was the kind of mess she had to deal with.

The world pacing by the window, Rhys thought of a word - _hiraeth_. It was a unique word, hard to translate into English really. Like a nostalgia for a place in your memory that never really was or, at least, one that didn’t exist anymore. He used to think of it kindly, reminisce about a Wales he supposed he thought must have once been.

The word sounded different to him now. A world without aliens. The place Gwen had wanted to protect. Somewhere she could return to at the end of the day and know everyone she loved was safe. Didn’t exist, did it? Maybe the world already knew. Maybe it always had. Maybe the 21st Century wasn’t about aliens migrating to Earth but human beings finally getting around to notice them and they were just as ridiculous as they were.

“Rhys?” came Ianto’s voice over the top of the mild snoring behind them.

“Yeah?”

“Teach me something in Welsh.”

Rhys smirked. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what this is. I would love some feedback if you have managed to get to the end of this.


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